Tag Archives: Frontiers

The Nazi-builtHoltzbrinck Publishing Group systematically scrubs any paper that casts vaccines in a negative light. Look at the case of a 2016 animal study of HPV vaccine from Japan.

Like many animal studies in medicine, the purpose is to learn more about a disease in humans by replicating its symptoms in animals. That is what scientists sought to do in this study published in Scientific Reports:

In the case of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, an unexpectedly novel disease entity, HPV vaccination associated neuro-immunopathetic syndrome (HANS), has been reported and remains to be carefully verified. To elucidate the mechanism of HANS, we applied a strategy similar to the active experimental autoimmune encephalitis (EAE) model – one of the most popular animal models used to induce maximum immunological change in the central nervous system.

Then suddenly in 2018, the Publisher retracted the paper by totally lying about the study’s purpose:

The Publisher is retracting this Article because the experimental approach does not support the objectives of the study. The study was designed to elucidate the maximum implication of human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine (Gardasil) in the central nervous system. However, the co-administration of pertussis toxin with high-levels of HPV vaccine is not an appropriate approach to determine neurological damage from HPV vaccine alone. The Authors do not agree with the retraction.

The study never said its objective was to “determine neurological damage from HPV vaccine alone,” but to “elucidate the mechanism of HANS [novel disease entity, HPV vaccination associated neuro-immunopathetic syndrome].” This retraction totally lied about the study’s objectives; no wonder the authors don’t agree with it!

The publisher, not the journal, retracted the post. The publisher of Scientific Reports is Nature Publishing Group, which also retracted this 2000 paper on developmentally impaired children. It did so simply because it included children in the 1998 vaccine-autism paper retracted by The Lancet. The retractions cited a medical circus hearing that punished the lead author of both papers for the following:

b. You knew or ought to have known that your reporting in the Lancet paper of a temporal link between the syndrome you described and the MMR vaccination, Admitted and found proved i. had major public health implications, Admitted and found proved ii. would attract intense public and media interest, Admitted and found proved

Nature Publishing Group is owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which also owns BioMedCentral. That publisher retracted a 2014 study for linking measles-mumps-rubella vaccination to autism and for the author’s opinion being that vaccination causes autism:

A reader flagged that there were undeclared competing interests related to the article: the author, Dr Hooker, was on the Board of Directors for Focus Autism which supports the belief that MMR vaccine causes autism. We were concerned enough about the allegations and the content to remove it from the public domain immediately because of the potential harm to public health

The study was since published elsewhere, but there is an ongoing theme. Whether it’s the HPV vaccine, the MMR vaccine, or vaccinations in general, Holtzbrinck censors vaccine risk papers. Avoid publishing in its journals like the plague.

The millennial fake news site Now This tweeted of recent efforts in New Jersey to curb religious exemptions from vaccination:

Watch anti-vaxxers lose their sh*t over a law that encourages critical vaccines

In response, Autism Investigated has put together a round-up of what it considers to be the top ten moments the vaccine people publicly lost their sh*t (over much, much less). Don’t see your favorite moments listed here? Feel free to share in the comments below! (Note: This list does not include direct threats of physical violence or death, though number one is close…)

10. Publication Bias

Now-former “Science”Blogger Tara C. Smith lost her sh*t when the only vaccinated versus unvaccinated study of autism was finally published.

Five years prior when challenged at NIH by Autism Investigated’s editor, Offit also lost his sh*t.

That was also when the editor was escorted out of the room, prompted by NIH doctor Tara Palmore who also lost her sh*t.

The NIH record which covered the event lied and said the editor “stormed out of the room and slammed the door.” The very end of the full video of Offit and Palmore’s exchange caught on a hot mic says otherwise:

PO: I saw him earlier. I saw him sitting there earlier.

TP: You did?

PO: I was about three slides into it.

TP: You signaled me. I didn’t realize it. I’m sorry.

PO: No, no, I didn’t signal you. It was really too late.

NIH director Francis Collins would later tell the editor at a federal meeting, “it does not sound like you were very diplomatic in your approach.”

Tolerant liberal throws Josh’s sign and says, “You’re just being a dick!”

Triggered marcher confronts Josh: “Do you have any fucking evidence, you bastard?!”

6. Ultimatum

“Journalist” Brian Deer required money to be in a film, only to later get mad at that film for not including him. So he lost his sh*t and sent the following ultimatum to the producer of The PathologicalOptimist shortly before the film’s release:

If by midnight, Pacific, Tuesday, I have not received your assurance in these respects, or been offered by you a credible alternative plan to remedy the damage that your “documentary” inflicts on my reputation (presenting me, as you do, as too cowardly to defend my journalism), I will publish this letter to media, as well as to senior independent film makers, festival directors, and others who may be in a position to advise me. I give you four full days to decide and tell me what you are going to do.”

A Texas doc came up with her own idea for dealing with vaccine refusers in 2016.

In other words, she lost her sh*t.

4. California Mom Threatened With Arrest

Watch this video and see what happens when states scrap their vaccine exemptions, November 2017.

California scrapped its vaccine exemptions after measles was brought over from Switzerland, which has open borders. Yet the entire state has since become an official “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants.

The State of California has completely lost its sh*t.

3. “Get the fuck out of here! Piece of shit!”

An absolute classic, from the editor’s third encounter with Paul Offit in 2012:

“You told American Medical News that protection from vaccine litigation improves vaccine industry profits. That’s making money off the backs of vaccine-injured children.”

Here is the exact line, from American Medical News, 2008:

“But other advantages to vaccine production have become increasingly evident, Dr. Offit noted. ‘There is a fairly beaten path in how to make them, and there is, to some extent, protection from liability in children’s vaccines,’ he said.”

But he continued the abuse:

“No, that is bullshit! I don’t do this for the money! Get out of here!”

And then he said:

“Get the fuck out of here! Piece of shit!”

Read the editor’s full piece on Offit’s most epic sh*t-loss at Age of Autism.

The second of these listed studies was previously published then pulled by another journal after the child-poisoners threw a Twitter fit. Autism Investigated sent a letter to the publisher Frontiers telling them we would make sure their index on the National Library of Medicine would be taken away. Frontiers was also reminded of its publishing standards that it was breaching:

You are now considering blocking the paper’s publication even after post-peerreview acceptance, thanks to online attacks from Twitter users who have neither read the study nor produced any inside knowledge about the study that would prove its findings to be invalid. You also lied to its readers that the publication was “provisionally accepted,” yet the abstract before it was deleted simply listed the study as “accepted” alongside a digital object identifier before it was taken down: http://www.autisminvestigated.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Screen-Shot-2016-11-28-at-09.36.00.png

Your guidelines also state that a study is not uploaded online until after final acceptance: http://home.frontiersin.org/about/review-system

Please tweet the link to the republished study to Frontiers on Twitter, repeating the threat of National Library de-listing. Please also be sure to troll the bitch who has led the charge for the study’s removal. Autism Investigated’s editor previously tweeted about her below:

It tells people to listen to doctors, while trying to strip the medical license of any doctor that encourages caution when vaccinating. Likewise, the vaccine industry claims people should dismiss any evidence that doesn’t appear in “peer-reviewed” journals. But when yet another study showing vaccines to be unsafe is published such as the first peer-reviewed analysis comparing autism in vaccinated children to unvaccinated children, the vaccine industry throws a whiny, “throw your toys out the pram”-style fit on Twitter to get it pulled. So embarrassing was that campaign even for vaccine apologists that Discover Magazine had condemned it.

Yet after ordering scientists to stop submitting papers to Frontiers journals and to stop reviewing studies for them, this genius scientist actually complained that its journals are a “niche for science denialism” and that its peer reviewers are “unqualified”:

What nonsense. If her concerns with Frontiers journals really were scientific, the last thing she would do is discourage scientists from reviewing papers for them or submitting articles to them. What she along with the rest of the vaccine industry really wants is to whine, blog and tweet until every study that challenges her positions is retracted, every doctor who holds conflicting opinions is de-licensed, every critic is shooed away and every child who has not been subjected to the government’s iatrogenic vaccine schedule is barred from school.

Like its allies in the mainstream media, the vaccine industry has learned little from the results of this past election. The public loss of trust in vaccinations will only grow, regardless of how many studies the vaccine industry gets fraudulently retracted or how many fraudulent studies it publishes.

Editor’s Reminder: Send this letter to Frontiers in Public Health to tell them to reinstate the study that showed unvaccinated children had significantly fewer diagnoses of autism and other chronic disorders if the journal wants to keep its National Library of Medicine index. You can write them here: editorial.office@frontiersin.org

For years, Discover Magazine has been a mainstay of extremely dishonest “science” reporting on the vaccine-autism connection. So it was very surprising to see an article featured there that correctly called out the “selective skepticism” of the Twitter campaign against the only peer-reviewed vaccinated versus unvaccinated study of autism. The author of the piece had previously slammed the study’s deletion on Twitter.

Earlier this week, Frontiers in Public Health published the abstract of a paper called ‘Vaccination and Health Outcomes: A Survey of 6- to 12-year-old Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children based on Mothers’ Reports’.Based on an online survey of 415 mothers involved in the homeschool movement, Mississippi-based researchers Mawson et al. reported that vaccination is associated with a much higher rate of neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism.

Hoo boy.

The Mawson et al. paper led to a lot of controversy, not least on Twitter. On Monday, many people, myself included, tweeted concern over seeing such a piece in a peer-reviewed journal. Frontiers, the Swiss publisher of the journal in question, took to Twitter to say that the article “was provisionally accepted but not published” and that “In response to concerns raised, we have reopened its review.” Minutes later, the paper disappeared, and if you visit its URL now, you will find nothing but an error message. (Here’s a copy, though.)

So, mission accomplished? Is the removal of this paper a victory for good sense over the irrational theory of vaccine denial? Or is it, on the contrary, censorship of a brave dissenting voice?

I don’t think it’s either, really, but this case does raise interesting questions about how we judge science. Is it right to object to a paper just because its results fly in the face of most previous research?

Everyone agrees that it is fair to critique a study on the basis of the methods. And many people did criticize the methodology of the Mawson et al. study, pointing to serious problems such as the small sample size (relative to the huge studies showing vaccines are safe[Editor’s Note: will post follow-up article dismantling said “studies”]), the purely self-report measures, and the potential for recall and selection bias.

Yet I don’t think that so many people would have been so critical of Mawson et al.’s methods if it weren’t for the nature of their findings. Studies suffering from the same flaws, or worse, get published all the time across many fields. Twitter doesn’t explode over every bad study. So isn’t there a risk that scientists are selectively sceptical, scrutinizing studies that challenge the consensus?

On the other hand, it’s true that the scientific consensus exists for a reason. As I said in one of my first-ever posts, we should beware the myth of the Galileo-like lone scientist who turns out to be right while everyone else is wrong:

All of our most popular myths about science are Robin Hood stories – the hero is the underdog, the rebel, the maverick who stands up to authority… the hero is a denialist. Once, this was realistic. Galileo was an Aristotelean cosmology denier; Pasteur was a miasma theory denier; Einstein was a Newtonian physics denier. But these stories are out of date… Science has moved on since the time of Galileo, thanks to his efforts and those of they who came after him, but he is still invoked as a hero by those who deny scientific truth. He would be turning in his grave, in the earth which, as we now know, turns around the sun.

In fact, it’s fair to say that if we were to reject everything that challenges the scientific consensus, we would be right to reject them in the vast majority of cases. But however accurate the consensus is, science is not supposed to be a matter of consensus, but a process of observing the world. The only thing that should matter, in judging science, is the quality of those observations, i.e. the strength of the methodology.

Two days before the date of the article, its author criticized the journal’s misconduct in removing of the study from its website:

Just one week after it was accepted for publication, the below study showing increased autism diagnoses in vaccinated children compared to unvaccinated children was pulled from the journal’s website. Please send the letter below to the publisher urging reinstatement of the study’s publication: editorial.office@frontiersin.org

Dear Frontiers,

I write to protest your ongoing censorship of legitimate scientific research accepted by one of your medical journals currently indexed in the US National Library of Medicine’s archives. That research lends credence to the fact that vaccines are causing the autism epidemic, a concern voiced repeatedly by President-Elect Donald Trump.

On November 28th, Frontiers in Public Health deleted the scientific abstract of Vaccination and Health Outcomes: A Survey of 6- to 12-year-old Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children based on Mothers’ Reports by Mawson et al. This study found that the odds of a diagnosis for autism or other related neurological disorder was significantly higher in vaccinated children than in unvaccinated children. The abstract was deleted after the study was already accepted for publication – a violation of your open access policies.

Youare now considering blocking the paper’s publication even after post-peer review acceptance, thanks to online attacks from Twitter users who have neither read the study nor produced any inside knowledge about the study that would prove its findings to be invalid. You also lied to its readers that the publication was “provisionally accepted,” yet the abstract before it was deleted simply listed the study as “accepted” alongside a digital object identifier before it was taken down: http://www.autisminvestigated.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Screen-Shot-2016-11-28-at-09.36.00.png

Your guidelines also state that a study is not uploaded online until after final acceptance: http://home.frontiersin.org/about/review-system

Particularly disturbing is that this is happening in spite of the election of Donald Trump, who said in last year’s Republican Debate that “Autism has become an epidemic.” He subsequently elaborated:

“Just the other day, two years old, two and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.

I only say it’s not — I’m in favor of vaccines, do them over a longer period of time, same amount.

But just in — in little sections. I think — and I think you’re going to have — I think you’re going to see a big impact on autism.”

This study helps confirm what President-Elect Trump expressed concerns about. The same Twitter users who slammed Mr. Trump for his vaccine remarks are also trying to bully youinto not publishing this vaccinated versus unvaccinated study. Please do not let that happen.

Any journal or academic publisher that retroactively deletes a study accepted for publication from public domain and reverses its decision to publish based on political pressure from social media is undeserving of index in the National Library of Medicine. In January, President-Elect Trump will be in charge of all US federal agencies, including NLM that currently lists your publications.